Royal commission into child sexual abuse to examine YMCA, including response to paedophile Jonathan Lord

Jonathan Lord "seemed to be ideal" as a childcare worker at the YMCA, the organisation that will be the focus of this week's public hearing at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The chief executive officer of the YMCA NSW, Phillip Hare, says that for two years, Lord "went above and beyond to help out parents".

Mr Hare says Lord would "go so far as to open the childcare centre for a parent who had to start work early" and would babysit to help out parents, often single parents.

But Mr Hare says in reality, Lord "was an insidious and deceitful individual, who was grooming not only children and parents but the YMCA itself".

"He gained the trust of the children, the parents and the fellow staff members to really get close to these children," Mr Hare said.

Royal Commission statistics:

Received more than 5,500 phone calls, 1,600 emails and 128,000 visits to the website

Held more than 200 meetings with advocacy groups, legal services and community organisations

Served 174 notices to produce documents on a range of government and non-government institutions

Referred 40 matters to police

Conducted 518 private sessions

More than 500 people are waiting to tell their story

Plans to have offered more than 1,000 private sessions by the end of the year

Lord joined the YMCA in Sydney's south at the age of 21, and worked there for two years.

He was recommended by another childcare worker and he was well known in youth groups. He had passed all the police checks and his two references were fine.

But in October 2011 he was arrested for 13 offences relating to the abuse of 12 boys.

He was convicted of offences which included two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child under 10 and eleven counts of aggravated indecent assault of a child.

In sentencing Lord to at least six years in jail in January this year, Judge Michael King said: "The offender's conduct overall demonstrates that he can be regarded as a predatory paedophile who is obsessed with obtaining sexual gratification from prepubescent male."

"The court is of the view the offender deliberately obtained work with the YMCA... because of the realisation of the opportunities that it would provide him to engage in his perverse sexual inclination to offend," Judge King said.

YMCA in the spotlight at royal commission

This week's public hearing at the royal commission will focus on the YMCA, which is the largest before and after school child care provider in New South Wales.

The YMCA has 11,000 children in its care each week in NSW alone. It runs 98 facilities and employs 500 staff.

According to the commission, the YMCA's policies and procedures around the recruitment, training and supervision of staff working in out of school hours' care and the responses of YMCA and police to allegations of sexual abuse of children in the care of YMCA will be examined in up to two weeks of public hearings.

The chief executive officer of the royal commission, Janette Dines, says "it's all around making child safe organisations and the YMCA is a good case study".

"This is one of many instances and cases that we're aware of that are devastating for the individuals involved for families and the impact that abuse has on people's lives," she said.

"It's very representative of what we're hearing around the country in terms of what sexual abuse does to the child.

"It's about helping the community to be better informed to be aware of risks to know what to look for in an institution that's providing out of school care."

Mr Hare says the YMCA has always cooperated with investigations.

We've never had this happen before, we never tried to cover it up, immediately we found out we stood him down and co-operated fully with the police.

YMCA NSW chief executive officer Phillip Hare

"We've never had this happen before, we never tried to cover it up, immediately we found out we stood him down and co-operated fully with the police," he said.

The Network of Community Activities is among those making submissions to the royal commission.

"The implications for the outside school hours sector are that we are now actually producing more resources around grooming behaviour and we're also being very vigilant in making sure families that families are aware of grooming behaviour," its chief Robyn Monro-Miller said.